toppa the world

You might remember in 2006 I reminisced about how fond my feelings were towards the Toppa Ice Cream company. Perhaps my affection is linked to the fact that, as of 1966, the company was owned by British Tobacco - might also explain why I still get a slight yearn when I smell cigarette smoke (I've never smoked). What I don't really understand is why, when that company was doing such great guns in 1966 when (according to the Bulletin, anyway, which I suppose might have had some rationale to promote something that wasn't as hot as it seemed, though surely the Bulletin wanted cred) 'several... firms would welcome the Toppa fold under their wings', it basically disappeared in the early 70s.*  One of the things Toppa did in the mid-60s was move its factory from Brunswick to Preston...

Melbourne Age 12 May 1971 

and then wait five years to sell the old one, or something. That space is now, I gather, occupied by these townhouses, although there might have been something else in-between:

This is where they were at in 1970, looking for a mature man. Perhaps immaturity was a problem they faced? Hard to tell. Branching into diary products might have been a mistake as well. 

Toppa disappears from the pages of the Age in the mid-70s, and I gather at some point in there they were bought by Paul's, who always pissed me off because I assumed they were named in response to Peters, which didn't seem fair. But there was a two-hour moment in early 1972 when Toppa really got into the groove:

The Age 16 December 1971

How rad would that be? Yeah, I reckon they used words like 'rad' then. 

Anyway, if I can think of any other avenues to find out what happened to Toppa I will go down those avenues, though possibly what happened to them is they were bought by another company which shut them down, that's the end. 

* 'Expansion in the food industry' The Bulletin 8 January 1966 pp. 48-49

more incompetent women

A few weeks ago I had a shrill harangue going on about the nasty cartoons in the Bulletin from sixty years ago, for which they must be punished. I just wanted to mention that on the weekend I picked up a copy of The Penguin Petty, a 1972 collection of Bruce Petty cartoons which aren't given a date but which are mainly very of their moment (because they're full of cartoons about Billy McMahon, who was only politically hot for a few years in the early 70s) and some more 'timeless' ones, some of which appeared in international organs such as The New Yorker. 

I was having a go at the Bulletin cartoonists for sexism and racism, so I feel I can't really let these cartoons by Petty go by without comment, though I can't quite put my finger on why I don't find these as sexist (they're not racist, of course, indeed there are no race issues touched on in the Petty collection except by a few degrees of separation). Here's one:

I actually don't think this is sexist. I think this is just a person in a difficult situation. 'Miss Melkin' made a mistake with her clay moisture, and no more I suspect. However this:

is a curious one, mainly because Miss Bellenger has such a look of calm, almost disdain, on her unremarkable face. She is not sexualised at all (in fact, she could be a longhaired boy) and nor is she ditzy or flustered by the situation. So, while I would have to say I still can't imagine a cartoon being produced at this time in which the trainee was a young man - who knows, maybe I'll stumble upon one - I also think we could regard this as a transitional cartoon in the field of 'women are shitty drivers' humour.

Obviously this stuff touches me because there is a body of thought which posits I am a shitty driver. Maybe so. But I am not as bad as my mother. Boom tish.

i drank a lot but didn't seem that drunk

It was the whisky, I suppose. It has that effect if you take it occasionally. I started out at the State Library. Yeah, the State Library bar. No, I started the afternoon at the State Library looking up various great things, and finding a few (I am going back there this afternoon to get other things I didn't get around to getting this time) and then to Greg's to attend to a couple of minor things re: the comp, then back to town to the Pony (via Pellegrini's - still the best coffee in the world) to see New Estate play a great show to a small priveleged crowd. We all had to get out of there fast because these weird, stuck up tap dancers showed up and started bossing everyone around. I was already pretty into whisky by that stage so I was less affronted than I might have been. Then we went to a housewarming party for some friends of Olivia's in north Coburg, who seemed like very nice people and they had a music room which unfortunately many people took as a reason to play some music. Actually I did that too, now I remember. Damn. The house had great decor, old cartoons from the Bulletin etc. Looked terriffic.

At about 2 am Mia and I walked to Pascoe Vale and got a taxi.

I did drink a lot, it was only Ballantyne's whisky but I think that is still an alcoholic one. but I feel fine today. Maybe I am kiddin' myself.

I have been reading Ada Holman's Sport of the Gods. It was a runner-up in C J De Garis' great Australian novel competition, 1921 and she won a hundred pounds for it. She was wife of William Holman, a NSW Labor premier, and a staunch feminist. The book was published by C J De Garis publishing and I am going to look into the books he published as an expression of his personality and ambitions, if that is possible. The same way W F Archibald's Bulletin was a vast rich text about W F Archibald, qv Sylvia Lawson's The Archibald Paradox. Or is all this just the whisky talking.